CINEGEAR COMPETITION
Posted onMay 10, 2008
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CINEGEAR is holding a competition for their second annual film series contest. Here’s what they had to say:
Here’s your chance to win some free film stock, camera rental, lighting rentals, and Lab time. DO IT!
ADS ADS ADS
Posted onMay 10, 2008
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Dropkick Monkey posted a commercial for the Sci-Fi channel made by these French filmmakers, you can check the vid out here. I went to their website and I was blown away by the quality of the commercials. Truly innovative stuff.
One commercial for Louis Vuitton was just a bunch of beautiful images, but man, it moooovveeed me, and I don’t know exactly why. Definately take a look at their site here. When I have time, I’m going to try to go through all of their videos, however, some stuff is only in French.
For those of you not cool enough to know, Dropkick Monkey is a website devoted to everything commercials. He works hard to find the best commercials out there to inspire. Check it out.
SMALL BUSINESS ASSOCIATION
Posted onMay 10, 2008
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While doing research into starting my own LLC production company, I stumbled upon this website http://sba.gov/
It’s a godsend! You can take a quiz to see if you’re ready to start a business or not, and I’m definately not ready. I need to do more research. It also has tons of resources, a free online training course, and it even offers local resources for free. Need a mentor? Look for one locally.
This website is definately a good starting point for those that want to start their own production company. Check it out. http://sba.gov/
BEST POWERPOINT EVER!
Posted onMay 5, 2008
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More power point presentations should follow this example. It is the excellent protype for a power point presentation. Watch it first, then read my “in depth” analysis.
It has an elegant design in terms of presenting its information.
It uses varied fonts, which correlates to how much info it is representing and how much it wants to grab your attention.
the words jump around however. This keeps your eyes on your toes because you can’t predict where the next set of words are going to be.
It uses lots and lots of pictures to demonstrate its point. The information presented is succinct and efficient and effectively, while not bogging you down with info overload. The key is spreading the info over several slides.
MINT.COM SLIDES
Posted onMay 5, 2008
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(Note: Cannot embed unless I want my blog out of wack)
1. MINT
By Giordany Orellana
2. FOUNDING FATHER
Aaron Patzer
Princeton and Duke
Former engeneer at IBM
3. COMPETITION
Money 2007
Quicken Delux 2007
4. TIMELINE
November 2005
March 2006
September 2007
5. OVERVIEW
Your Accounts
Your Alerts
Your Financial Health
Your Budget
Your Ways to Save
6. TRANSACTIONS
Rename
Categorize
Label
Search
Notes
7. SPENDING TRENDS
Pie Chart
Timeline
Merchants
8. SPEND SPACE
Compare Categories
Cities
States
USA
9. SECURITY
Email Only
No Info Storage
Yodlee
128 bit encryption
Hacker Safe
10. A FILMMAKER’S FRIEND
Budgets
Notification
Organization
BEEZLEBUB
Posted onMay 5, 2008
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I was really close to editing the uncyclopedia entry for Chuck Norris, but I realized I could not top the guys who had already written about the mythological man.
So I decided I would draw a comic strip for Bunk Magazine which is now sorta the Los Wikiless Timesepedia. All of the comics there looked too nice and fuzzy, so I decided I needed to make something evil and naughty, so I decided on demons. But what to name it? I remembered the title for that great children’s/family book Lord of the Flies, and how that’s a translation for Beezlebub, hebrew for the Devil. I thought it was a cute name, so I stuck with it, and decided that these demons would be very tech-savy, and would use tech in narfarious ways. Recently, Facebook had just launched Facebook Chat Beta, so I decided I’d talk aobut that.
So, without further ado, check out the strip here.
PAPER # 1 & 3 REWRITES!
Posted onMay 5, 2008
Filed under PAPER REWRITES | 1 Comment
PAPER # 1 REWRITE
Welcome to My Brand Spakin’ New Blog!
I’ve always wanted to start a new blog, but I could never think of anything to write that was worth reading. I realized that if I were going to make something actually worth reading, then I would have to either inform people of information that they would like to know about, or write about something that would help people in general. I decided I would do both, and talk about how people break into Hollywood and the art of filmmaking itself.
By breaking in, I mean “The process of being hired by Hollywood executives in order to create more creative content after successfully demonstrating your worth through any entertainment medium.” Let’s break this down even further by starting backwards: “…Demonstrating your worth by any entertainment medium.” This medium can be writing, short film, feature film, commercials, producing, or through internet content.
But in order to be noticed by the Hollywood executives, you have to “…successfully demonstrate your worth…” and this means winning a contest of some sort (i.e. On the Lot), by garnering attention at a prestigious film festival (Sundance), or gaining internet fame (David Lehre).
Finally, you must be “…hired by Hollywood Executives in order to create more creative content…” which means exactly what it says, and that’s because Hollywood is a game, and to stay in the game, you have to keep playing the game, or else you’re out, and someone else joins in.
I am a 20 year old filmmaker and I’ve been making films since I was fifteen, and my goal is to break into Hollywood before the age of 23. It is a notorious age because many filmmakers have become successful at or around the age of 23: Steven Spielberg, Robert Rodriguez, Peter Jackson and many more.
On the road to breaking into Hollywood, there are many different tried and true routes to take: make a feature and hope it does well at festivals, or take years climbing the ranks and hope to prove studios that you are finally worthy of helming a big studio picture.
However, my focus will be mainly on the internet, and how it is helping today’s young filmmakers acquire recognition more quickly and efficiently. For example, there are people who get agents after posting videos on Youtube. There are filmmakers who become underground sensations because they have uploaded their films in bit torrent sites. And now there’s a new trend appearing where filmmakers are getting recognized from winning several online video contests and making loads of cash.
I hope to also provide information on a set of strategies, guidelines, and principles that all successful filmmakers instinctively follow that anyone can read about and hopefully try to follow also. In the coming weeks, I will speak to faculty and interview several filmmakers on the cusp of breaking in and talk to them about their futures in the industry and hopefully start developing this blog and how there is an art form to filmmaking.
Of course, there’s no full proof way of breaking in, but there are strategies that can help you along in much the same like way reading Sun Tzu might help you win the war.
PAPER #3 REWRITE
FILMMAKERS AND THE INTERNET: A SYMBIOTIC SYSTEM
The internet is the filmmaker’s new frontier. Those who dare to engage the internet may reap her rewards.
About 100 years ago, the first frontier was cinema, then television, and now the Internet. With this new technological medium, there are the luddites who reject it and then there are those who welcome it with open arms.
About 60 years ago, television was seen as a threat to Hollywood. More and more people were staying home to watch television instead of going out to a movie theater. Now, almost every studio owns a television network division, and television makes a bulk of the money for studios. [1] With the advent of the internet, Hollywood again fears this new technology. They have reason to concern because of the growing piracy and downloading of movies on the internet.
But there are those who have been able to harness its ever-expanding audience and focus the power of viewer-dom for their benefit. A few have been able to catapult themselves in the limelight for Hollywood to take notice.
In 2006, David Lehre released “Myspace: The Movie” a short film about several interactions involving the culture of Myspace.com. Segments include relationships, and meeting strangers and having parties. The video went viral and reached over 30 millions views. The video was mentioned in the Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle and New York Times, with an Interview with the Washington Post here. The Hollywood doors have opened for him, and he was courted by Fox studios to produce a pilot.
What puts Lehre apart from other young filmmakers is that he strategically decided to use the Internet to enhance his chances of becoming noticed. He realized that making a movie about myspace would be the ticket to fame:
He succeeded in his goal, and was rewarded handsomely. He is one of the perfect examples of successfully executing the definition of Breaking into Hollywood by strategically using the internet to show his worthiness and garner the attention of Hollywood honchos. The formula for his video success seems to be Current Topic (Myspace) + comedic observations everyone can relate to + short video = several million views. Other people have tried to imitate this formula by making short movies for Facebook here, here, and here.
However, it has been over two years, and David Lehre is not exactly a household name. Sustaining success through the internet takes time. Lighting struck once, but it has been hard for Lehre to repeat his success. He recently released a short online series titled Turbo Girls, a campy series about spy girls ala Charlie’s Angels. The videos are viewable here. It has garnered only a couple thousand views, but nothing near the success of “Myspace: The Movie.”
He has finished directing the pilot for Fox, which seems to be a variety/sketch comedy show that will soon be released June 2008. He has posted six behind-the-scenes shorts showing the process. You can watch them here. However, they were all released one year ago. Currently, he is producing a music video, a series of commercials, and several online contest commercial entries, and a new film.
LisaNova, real name Lisa Donovan, is one of the premier creators on Youtube, being the 9th most subscribed director. The other top seven creators are: five video blogs, Universal Music group, and the last belongs to Lonelygirl15, which we will also talk about later.
Lisa Donovan currently resides in Venice, CA and works in a field related to the Industry (not sure, she never stays or writes it anywhere). She came to Los Angeles five years ago to become an actor, but as she soon realized, it was hard to break in. She also auditioned for a role on “Mad TV” but they turned her down. However, two years ago, she discovered Youtube and decided to post videos as LisaNova. She rose to fame by mocking the PuffDaddy (P-diddy?) video he made promoting Burger King. Her video is viewable here.
She started to grow her fanbase, so much so, that one of the people who watched her videos passed it on to Nicole Garcia, casting director for “Mad TV.”
They then called Lisa in to audition again, and she got a featured role on the show last year. However, they did not sign her up for another season. But that’s okay, LisaNova is far from over. She has over 92 thousand subscribers, with me being one of them. Her videos get over 100,000 views easy; her lowest viewed movie is around 58,000 and her highest is over 3 million.
Lonelygirl15 started as a video blog on YouTube about a little 16-year-old girl who had very religious and restrictive parents. However, fans became suspicious and they soon discovered that it was all a methodically thought-out fictional series created by a group of young men. This paragraph comes from the New York Times articles that sums up an introduction:
The goal for them was to capture the attention of Hollywood and they succeeded by being signed up by CAA, one of the biggest agencies in Hollywood. Also, Jessica Lee Rose went on a promoting spree to several talk shows.
Without the advent of the internet, specifically video sharing sites like YouTube, none of this would have happened, and the filmmakers would probably not be signed up with CAA right now.
The only other historical example that I can relate this to is the story of Andy Kaufman and his beginnings. He started out pretending to be a foreigner from the island of “Caspiar” with a funny accent (first Borat?). His comedic acts that tricked people into thinking he was a real foreigner made him catch major attention. This then lead to a part in the ABC television series Taxi, where he played a variation of his foreign character. Because he was able to convincingly trick people into thinking he was something that he was not, this gained him vast notoriety, because throughout his career he would continue to trick people into thinking that many of the jokes he performed were true.
Brad is the creator and director behind itsallinyourhands.com and Satacracy 88. He’s a graduate of USC Cinema’s Master program, and soon after he graduated he quickly began production on the online web series Satacracy 88, which is about a woman who discovers she has certain powers and a deep plot that threatens to destroy her. Along with Satacracy, he also created the website itsallinyourhands.com that specifies in interactive online webs shows. What puts Satacracy apart from the many online web shows out there is that Satacracy is a “Choose your own adventure” series that lets the audience decide which route the main character should take by making the choices for her.
I conducted an interview over the phone, and I asked him about filmmaking and the internet with a few questions:
1. What’s your ultimate goal as a filmmaker?
My goal as a filmmaker has changed as I started creating online content. When I graduated from the USC film school, like every other filmmaker, I wanted to make a feature film as quickly as possible. But you’re in competition with a lot of people, you need a lot of money, and you need to be green lit, you need permission to show your work. <You are not important enough to work as a director. The internet allows me to produce and distribute my own content, basically for free, and it gave me the same kind of freedom any artist has; you can just do it now, anyone can now make a movie to express themselves and distribute it for the world to see.
I have to take into account the medium and the art form and it’s a whole different ball game. The line between broadcast and independent online series gets thinner and thinner. It’s the young filmmakers like you and I that are in a really good position right now.
Everything is community based now. It’s not enough to make a film. You have to take into account the audience and where and what their outside market using the internet to gain an audience. For low budget films, they release the film online if you want to make a feature. You can build a community around an infinite number of things. It is an exciting time to start making movies.
2. Has the internet shaped the way you make films?
Yes, it absolutely has. It is a new medium. When I plan an online series, I consider two major components: The way the show is going to be experienced, and the way it is going to be created. First thing is that I think the internet offers more opportunities for interactivity in an unprecedented way.
Going in direct relation with the creators online, creators can have characters exist in many forms, there are ways where the audience decides which way the show is gonna go. Something that is very new. That’s what the difference is between a show that’s meant for online consumption is interactivity, and the ability for the audience to control the show they’re watching.
Typically, when people are watching a show online on a desk, it’s on a small screen. It’s going to change in the near future, but now people are watching stuff in their chair on a screen in a smaller form. So, I try to choose my shot tighter than on television and features. On features, it’s a lot of medium shots. Online, the screen is about the size of the human eyeball, you gatta shoot really really tight, a lot of close ups and I like to keep the pace really really quick. People only have a few minutes to watch the show at work. It’s more about the impact something has in that short amount of time.
3. There are several benefits to putting your films online but have you encountered any negatives to putting your films online?
No, I wouldn’t say I’ve encountered anything negative; you learn things as you do things, the more and more I released the show, the smarter I became to make ways to make more money with it, to proliferate it, and publicize it, you obviously get better the more you do something.
4. Do you believe filmmakers can acquire wealth from the internet alone?
I do, yes, absolutely. There are a lot of opportunities for revenue sharing. As these things become more popular, more influential in the culture or something, we will start to see more and more ways for people to make money with them.
5. Do you think one day the internet will come to bypass and replace studios? Meaning, there will be no need for studios in the future for making films and distributing them.
I think there will always be studios. There might be a trend of smaller production companies versus a handful of larger ones, but if someone can work out the logistics to have a devoted webs series and can produce 25 shows, I don’t think there are going to replace studios. I think they will have studios for this medium as well. The studio system will be fine and they will adapt and produce web content and it will become polarized like it was with radio. As long as the market wants to watch this stuff and the way for more to show adds. , you’ll see the polarization of studios you’ll start to see larger studios kinda get in the game and adapt to the medium.
Adrian Picardi is a young man from Pasadena who graduated from the LA film school in 2006. He entered his thesis short film into the Film2Music contest in late 2006 and it won the Grand Prize, and a trip to Sundance in 2007. The short is viewable here. A couple of months later, he won the Grand Prize for the PSAID contest. He then entered several more contests that year, the largest ones were True to John Woo and the Assassin’s Creed Contest. In both, he made it to the top ten finalists, but alas, in both someone else became the Grand Prize winner.
Because he has won several contests, the LA time writer Alana Semeuls contacted him and mentioned him in the article she wrote on how the companies that sponsor the video contests win every time because the contestants go to great lengths to acquire views and votes:
Even though he may not win every contest, he gets a lot of exposure by get close to winning them, and of course, when he does win, then it is a boost in the recognition. Several independent production houses have contact him in order to sign him up to director several indie pictures, but Picardi has declined because their story quality is not exactly what he’s going for.
Picardi is on the cusp of something big: The first ever known action online web series titled The Resistance. It’s a action oriented series that will run for eight episodes. Right now, there are four teaser trailers posted on the YouTube site, but production on episodes is already underway. They have already finished shooting one episode, and it has a planned release of May/June.
To all three fellow filmmakers, Picardi, Lehre, Winderbaum, I sent out a small questionnaire about the internet and filmmakers. Unfortunately, Lehre hasn’t responded to me yet. I almost didn’t get Picardi to respond, I had to call him and he said because he was super busy and stressed out, he didn’t much time for full responses which is very understandable because “The Resistance” is a super low budget production, with most of the resources coming from friends and family and favors.
PICARDI (SHORT) INTERVIEW
1. What’s your ultimate goal as a filmmaker?
To Make entertaining movies
2. Has the internet shaped the way you make films?
Not really.
3. There are several benefits to putting your films online but have you encountered any negatives to putting your films online?
Not really.
4. Do you believe filmmakers can acquire wealth from the internet alone?
No. It’ll just open up more opportunities and more doors.
5. Do you think one day the internet will come to bypass and replace studios? Meaning, there will be no need for studios in the future for making films and distributing them.
No, definitely not.
Overall, Picardi, through the great exposure he receives from winning these online video contests, gets closer to knocking on Hollywood’s door, and hopefully The Resistance becomes an internet success. Lonelygirl15 was the perfect internet success story that made winners of all those involved. It gave Jessica Rose early fame and it guaranteed work for the three filmmakers in the industry they wanted to break into. Lisanova also tasted fame for that moment she was on television, but it seems as though the internet beckons her more, and she it, because she cannot creatively control anything on television yet, whereas she is the master of her channel on YouTube. David Lehre strategically enhanced his exposure by creating the Myspace movie, but time will tell if he can sustain the internet success he was first baptized with. Without the internet, none of these creators/filmmakers mentioned here could have arrived to where they are now, and yet, the internet would not, could not be what it is today without creators and filmmakers like these, and that is why it is a symbiotic system.
LisaNova is currently is sharing revenue with YouTube as one of the few paid content creators, or “partners,” and she has just started her own video blog where she just talks as herself, and not as any of her characters.
The guys over at LG15 Studios have created the spin-off show KateModern, that takes place in the same universe as the original Lonelygirl15. It’s about a young girl who has a secret that the audience needs to solve (aka watch). Nevertheless, what is unique about it is the product placement marketing and the interaction the show has with its audience, creating alternate reality games to coincide with the show by using the Bebo platform.
Brad Winderbaum is currently working on the final episodes of Satacracy 88 and preparing a new spin off series.
Picardi is finishing up the final touches on the last episodes of The Resistance.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
[1] Flint, Joe. “On The Air”. Entertainment Weekly. Posted Nov 18, 1998. Published in issue #458. <http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,285736,00.html>
[2] Goo, Sara Kehaulani. “Filmmaker David Lehre Interview.” Washington Post. Posted Monday, May 1, 2006; 12:00 AM
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/28/AR2006042800682.html?sub=AR>
[3] Wallenstein, Andrew. “How YouTube Helped LisaNova’s Start Her Career.” The New York Times. Published: April 29, 2007.
[4] Heffernan, Virginia; Zeller, Tom. “”Lonely Girl’ (and Friends) Just Wanted a Movie Deal.” The New York Times. Published: September 12, 2006
[5] Semeuls, Alana. “Sponsors are Winners In Online Contests.” Los Angeles Times. August 25th, 2007
<http://www.commercialalert.org/news/archive/2007/08/sponsors-are-winners-in-online-contests>
NOTE: Link to the source LA Times article has been lost or broken.
Meta
Posted onMay 5, 2008
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MINT EXPLORED
Posted onApril 22, 2008
Filed under TIPS | 2 Comments
Without financing, movies could not be made. Then, there have to be ways to keep track of all those finances to make that movie, and if they cannot be tracked then there is no movie. Big Film Studios have accountants and people specifically trained to handle budgets, but what about indie filmmakers? Well, their financial management woes are over because Mint.com has arrived.
Without budgets, filmmakers could not get their films even greenlit. There is a certain amount of money allocated for pre production, production, and postproduction. If you use the budget from one for another, then the film will not be completed, period. Therefore, the importance of keeping a tight budget is detrimental to a film’s completion.
Financial money management software has been around for a while, but the main problem is that a lot of it soaks up too much time to put everything thing in manually. You also have to synchronize it with your bank accounts manually, and even then, like the creator of Mint.com attests to, it still may not work exactly the way you would like it to.
Mint’s inception began around Thanksgiving time in 2005. Aaron started to use Quicken to get his finances straight, but he knew it would take him all day to manually input his finances together. Even then, he was not able to get a simple graph of his spending habits, and that is when he decided he would take matters into his own hands and create his own money management software. So in March 2006 he quit his job and started working on Mint.com, a free online money management software. It went into public Beta in September of 2007.
The first thing you notice about Mint’s website is the Web 2.0-ness. It has the bubbly buttons and gradients, and the pleasing soft colors. When you log in, you get a good overview of all your accounts. It has a financial health bar, which compares your assets vs. your debts. It has an overview of all your budgets too, so that you make sure you keep within the limits you set. You can set up your notifications to get a summary of your accounts, low balances, credit card due dates, and available credit by email and or text. You can also see your ways to save.
This a great way to keep all the accounts under surveillance and a good overview to make sure you stay within budget. Being notified from Mint of coming close to running over budget gives you enough time to react and decide if something, like that one extra shot, is actually worth doing.
Under transactions, it gives you all of the transactions for the last 30 to 90 days for all of your available accounts. You can search your transactions, categorize them, and add notes and labels to them. Another nifty trick is that you can “split” your transactions into several smaller transactions, instead of one huge transaction. This is a really good way to organize all the categories that go into spending for film. There can be one category for film stock, one for equipment rental, and one for food. It’s great!
The most helpful visual aide Mint provides is the spending trend pie chart. The pie is clickable, and is able to break down into even smaller pie charts for specific categories.
There’s also spend space, where you can compare spending ratios from your categories, for example shopping, to other parts of the country. This part is mainly good for personal management and not necessarily for film budgeting reasons, but it’s still pretty cool to look at.
As for security, Mint takes into account several factors that make it one of the safest websites online. First, you don’t have to give your name, just an email address to register. They don’t store any of your accounting information or passwords. Even if someone was able to get into your Mint account, they can’t do anything with the accounts, they can’t transfer money or anything. Your actual account information is stored with Yodlee, an online service company that is like the Fort Knox of online banking. The way Mint works is that it communicates with Yodlee using 128-bit SSL encryption, which is the financial industry standard for data protection. They are the company that provides online banking to other companies like ING direct, Capital One, Wachovia, and a lot of other trading institutions. Plus Mint is Hacker Safe and it’s tested daily.
Mint.com is an automated, fast and easy way to manage your finances, whether it’d be for personal or business use. You can keep track of all of your accounts, and stay within budget.
PENTAD: MINT.COM
Posted onApril 19, 2008
Filed under Uncategorized | 1 Comment
PENTAD: MINT.COM
WHO: Aaron Patzer is the founder and CEO of Mint.com in March of 2006. He is a graduate of Princeton and Duke University, and former engineer at IBM.
WHAT: Mint.com is a free online money management software that regulated and budgets your finances all in one place. It also recommends offers that will benefit you and it sends warnings by email or text whether you running low on money or if a credit card payment is due soon.
WHERE: Mountain View, California
WHY: The anecdote goes that one day Aaron was using Quicken to do his finances but he couldn’t figure out a way to get the stats showing. All he wanted was a pie chart of his spending, but he couldn’t do it. So he decided to create Mint.
WHEN: Aaron thought of making Mint around November 2005, and created it in March of 2006, and it went into public beta in September of 2007.
